Whoever writes the intro's to games must have at least a PhD, and possibly even be a professor; no-one could mis-represent reality so much without having studied it in enormous detail. Apparently a black hole has "appeared" and a planet with an unstable core has leapt out of it. If the core explodes, it takes the rest of the galaxy with it. Great. Let's ignore this nonsense and get on with the game.

You control the BioLogically Operated Being, or BLOB for short, a round, green beachball with eyes, ears and legs dressed up in a bright red tea-cosy, who has to travel through the planet's underground caverns and tunnels in search of the core. Once you get there, you find out which nine of the assorted objects that are lying around can be used to re-stabilise the planet, then out you go again to try to get them. Nice and simple. Except that you only have a limited amount of energy, which is constantly running down, occasionally being drained by the planet's numerous and occasionally deadly inhabitants (sorry, didn't I mention them?), there are various fatal traps lurking about, you can't carry more than four things at a time and, oh yes, there are over 500 screens to try to search.

On the plus side, you can pick up extra energy, extra lives, extra bridging units (for getting across gaps or climbing on to ledges) and extra zapping power for your energy bolts (of course you've got energy bolts. What's the good of a game where you can't go around killing things?), all these things apparently having been left scattered around by a very untidy philanthropist. You can also trade items in the Cheops pyramids, as long as you have your Access card with you. This also gets you through various security doors which can lead to otherwise inaccessible areas. Once you've found the objects you want, the way back can be made substantially easier by using one of the fifteen teleporters to be found around the complex, each with its own codeword. When you enter one, dial the codeword of another and you'll be teleported across to your destination, much easier than wading through nasties.

Another quick way of getting about is to hop on to a hoverpad at one of the docking units. Using this, you can fly around instead of plodding about, which makes going up a lot easier. Unfortunately, whilst you are on your hoverpad, you can't pick up any of the core objects, so you have to drop the pad off at the next docking post and go back for the object.

Graphics are nicely, though not excitingly, used, the animation being up to standard rather than a breakthrough in technology. Sound is in a similar catagory. At first sight, I was not impressed by anything except the "cuteness" of the game, which is definitely above average. Not expecting much, I started playing. When I was interrupted by a phone call, I found that about four hours had gone by without me even noticing. Also without me getting very far, but we won't go into that.

The necessity for mapping out such a large game is obvious and, for me, annoying. I hate mapping and call blessings from the heavens on any company which provides a map with the packaging, but that is not the case with Starquake. The package does, however, contain instructions in English, German and French, a highly commendable move which acknowledges that there are other people on the planet apart from those in England's own green and pleasant land.

That the game is an updated version of an old eight-bit product does, at times, seem obvious, but the conversion has been well done, using the better graphics of the ST to refine what had gone before rather than make something original for the machine, whilst preserving the gameplay. Not really a classic, but lots of fun and very difficult.

Company: Mandarin Software

Price: 19.95 ponds

Value for money: 8

Thanks to Anne Creasey of Mandarin Software and Cuddly Cactus Amsterdam a division of Stichting Stem (020 6644022) for the review copy.